tech. It’s still paper and shaking hands. We listened to artists about what they needed.” Arteïa offers a full inventory of an artist’s vetted and confirmed pieces, plus its showing history. Blockchain is used as supply chain management technology. The artist – or assigned executor – is the only person who can alter each work’s data, which is stored securely on the blockchain. French artist Hélène Delprat is the first to be completely catalogued by Arteïa. Along with her gallerist, Christophe Gaillard, she has catalogued around 3000 pieces from 40 years of work, including films, paintings, photos, drawings and sculptures. Even digital artwork is not protected by blockchain, since it doesn’t lend itself to storing large files. The data that makes up one of Arteïa’s records, or an NFT, can point to an original artwork that exists online, but the current technology – essentially a secured URL with a certificate of ownership – doesn’t give the content any more security. It’s the early stages, but Marian expects great promise for a new generation of artists. “NFT technology is still at the beginning. It’s very interesting and secure. The most important thing now is the community’s excitement – new artists and collectors who are showing how much the art ecosystem has to evolve.” In the past, it has been limited to a select number of famous or financially successful artists, plus a limited amount of collectors acting within those markets. One hundred artists are managing to make 80-90% of sales. Being on the blockchain, with the decentralisation and removal of intermediaries it brings, it’s exciting to see how many artists and collectors plan to join in. Collin Müller is a Hamburg-based IT and digital media consultant, who helps clients negotiate the ins and outs of blockchain technology. He reminds us that NFTs are ultimately a certificate of authenticity, and the uniqueness they confer on an asset is to some extent illusory. “One big misconception about non-fungible tokens is that they do not prevent the creation of exact copies,” says Müller. “I can buy a piece of digital art and also own the non-fungible token associated with it, but as soon as it’s on my computer screen, I can create an exact copy.
Now, if I want to sell that copy, people will also ask me to transfer the specific certificate – the non-fungible token.” Müller is sceptical that NFTs will have wide, universal value in the short term. “There is application for NFTs, but only within certain niche circles. I personally don’t understand why people pay millions of euros for a piece of art – digital or non-digital. If I like the image, I'm happy having a copy hanging on my wall. I don't care whether it’s the original Picasso, or not. But, obviously, there’s an international art scene where it matters, and this is exactly the same with the digital world. As long as people are willing to pay, there will be a market. When they suddenly don’t want to pay for it, the market will crash.“ NFT = NEW FUTURE TECHNOLOGY? So, what’s the future of NFTs? Are they a new, more reliable way to create and preserve value in digital assets? Or not? At the beginning of 2021, you couldn’t turn around in the digital content space without running into an excited conversation about NFTs. Many creative businesses and individuals rushed to push out NFTs for their content. At the time of writing this feature, the meteoric enthusiasm for NFTs threatens to become a collapsed bubble. In April, a Bloomberg article reported that prices for digital collectibles were already ‘sliding’ ( bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-03/nft- price-crash-stirs-debate-on-whether-stimulus- led-fad-is-over ). According to nonfungible.com : “Average prices for NFTs have tumbled almost 70% from a peak in February to about $1400. Time will tell if the boom deflates, or whether the volatility indicates a new market going through a period of price discovery.”
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